DarkFall review prep work

I’m planning to do a review of DarkFall soon (since our 1yr anniversary is coming up and I want to get it something special), but I’m trying to decide the best way to write it. I know for the thousands in attendance, and the MILLIONS reading around the world, we have a mix of people here who do play DarkFall (newbs and vets alike), people who are curious (no homo) about DarkFall, and the last few remaining haters (Hi haters).

I don’t want to do a straight up “this has been added since launch” post, because that would not only require me to comb over previous patch notes, but would also be somewhat dry. I also don’t want to do a ‘pure’ review of everything because I’ve already talked at length about some of the basics (how sounds is important, how the shadows are awesome, what the death penalty is, etc) and I don’t think that would help anyone.

My general plan right now is to touch on some of the more common misconceptions about DF (its all PvP, it’s a gank-fest, everyone in-game is a kewl d00d), highlight what I think are some of it’s standout features among the MMO genre, and maybe go over why DarkFall would be an enjoyable experience for the average MMO fan and not just the perceived “hardcore PvPers only” crowd.

But before I do any of that, I figured I would ask you, dear read, what you might like to see in that DarkFall review?

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 1:05 pm and is filed under Darkfall Online, Site update. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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20 Responses to DarkFall review prep work

I’d like to see you write about how accessible (or inaccessible) the game is for someone who hasn’t PVP’d in general. What kind of mindset does the average Darkfall player have relative to a non-PVPer?

What is the crafting system like?

Despite being an avid player of Darkfall, what criticisms can you level against the game?

Syncaine said,”My general plan right now is to touch on some of the more common misconceptions about DF (its all PvP, it’s a gank-fest, everyone in-game is a kewl d00d), highlight what I think are some of it’s standout features among the MMO genre, and maybe go over why DarkFall would be an enjoyable experience for the average MMO fan and not just the perceived “hardcore PvPers only” crowd.”

Really? I guess you must have an argument for why you think the above is true. Let’s hear it.

I think you need to justify it here because the people who read your review and compare it to everything else may well be in disagreement.

For the record, I love Darkfall. I am reveling in the PVP, depth, beauty and fresh approach to the MMO genre.

But I want to hear how you would defend your statement above because, depsite my clear eyed perspective of the game, alot of folks see Darkfall as fitting those terms you stated.

You asked your readership for input on your upcoming Darkfall review. Your final paragraph suggests that you want to clarify some misconceptions about Darkfall (that it is all PVP centric, full of EPeen swinging leet-boys, and is a gank fest).

Although I agree in many ways that Darkfall is more than those things, I would love to hear your arugments to support that. Because I think a lot of people who don’t play Darkfall (and even some who do) believe that DF is exactly that.

I hope your review will not necessarily be all fluff and constantly complete the sentence, “I love DarkFall because…” I hope there will be some criticism. I think DarkFall may suffer from some gankfests because of the corpse looting ability. On the other hand, players may control the urge to make ganking a profession, or do they?

I would like to hear about how crafting works. From official descriptions, players can make themselves famous by crafting great weapons and other items for others. Can they really?

Disclosure: I have tried many MMOs, but not DarkFall and am bored by the lack of alternatives to the kill-things-to-get-experience grind.

No doubt the game generally works now. But so did WAR when it launched. What killed me about WAR was the little things: mailboxes that took seconds to open each piece of mail, an AH that was broken at first and unintuitive when it did work anyways. You have mentioned that housing rent is the same for every size house and there is some issue with the player vendor…what else is a daily frustration for Darkfall players that could seemingly be fixed with a small investment of dev time.

Syn, you are a noted booster of the game that gets money back through referral of the game you are trying to review. I don’t think you can be objective enough to review it. What you are going to write is a puff piece-I wouldn’t call it a review.

I would love to hear about the bad things of DF. The things that in your opinion should improve. Having played sandbox mmorgps in the past I can understand the strengths of DF but since I have not played it I cannot know which are its weaknesses.

And if you’re gonna answer that with DF is not for those kind of players, then do so…but then you must elaborate as to whether DF is a sandbox MMO or a PvP MMO :).

example 2: Social & Player Interaction , compare it to say WARhammer (i.e. what is DF doing to bring players together, to fight against each other, to “pick sides” and to encourage battles to happen) ?

WAR failed doing so, Age of Conan had similar failings with their Siege System. How is DF doing it better?

Hell, i’m sure you can write books just on this “world PvP” aspect (and why even WoW’s World PvP failed).

Personally, for me, i’m not a 1 vs 1 PvP’er, i’m a World/Large Scale PvP’er [DAOC etc]. Small scale PvP is most likely to result in ganking/griefing, large scale like in Warhammer…very little actually.

You don’t have to explain the actual elements, just how it might be better or similar to something non-DF players might be familiar with.

And another aspect which i’m quite surprised with in SWG is how the world design/travel routes encourage players to socialise and connect. SWG do it very well with the “starbase hubs” where everyone travels through [almost like Oggrimar] . You don’t need to be at war to go to these places and find traders/vendors/roleplayers….

The community of the game in-game versus the forum community. For example, I read a post int the DF forum last Thursday where a guy/girl asked about the possibility of a “free trial”. The end result from the community was basically (and I paraphrase), “stfu n00b”, “n00bs would ruin the game if free trials were offered”, flame on n00bs and flame on question asker, etc.

Is this the same kind of response one would expect from asking an innocuous question in game? Are the same flamers/griefers on the forum, flamers griefers in game? Being that the community is relatively small, one would assume a since of welcoming in new players rather than discouraging them prior to them even subscribing, as was the case.

[…] the review itself, I want to just set straight why I’m writing this review, as judging from the pre-post there was some confusion. It should be very clear to anyone around here that I really enjoy […]